Samsung is under fire in its home turf of South Korea over an alleged abuse of its wireless patents, Reuters reported today. The Korea Fair Trade Commission confirmed that the country’s watchdog has launched an investigation based on Apple’s antitrust complaints against Samsung which alleges that the Galaxy maker is abusing its patents to gain an unfair advantage in the marketplace.

Of course, Apple won a landmark victory in a high-stake U.S. trial last month that found Samsung guilty of breaching Apple’s design and utility patents. The jury awarded Apple $1.05 billion in damages and ruled that the iPhone maker had not violated any of Samsung’s patents.

Samsung promised back in 1998 to license its 3G patents to the European Telecommunications Standards Institute on FRAND (fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory) terms, but apparently regulators in both South Korea and European Union are taking an issue with that, Reuters reported:

The FTC is investigating whether Samsung is unfairly competing in the market by abusing its dominance in wireless technology patents. Apple filed its complaints earlier this year, said an FTC official, who is not authorized to talk to the media.

European Union regulators have also been investigating Samsung for possible breaches of antitrust rules by accusing rivals of infringing its technology patents.

It tried this trick last year with 3G patent assertions against the iPhone 4S, with a hit rate of zero. I would strongly discourage Samsung from trying to use 4G/LTE-essential patents to shut down the iPhone 5.

It won’t improve Samsung’s position. It will only make things worse, especially with antitrust regulators. In my view, the reasonable approach for Samsung would be to sue for FRAND royalties over its SEPs, not injunctions.

According to this Korea Times article, Samsung owns the world’s third-largest 4G/LTE portfolio, though that doesn’t matter much because it only takes one bullet to kill.

Additionally, the iPhone 5 is said to carry a Qualcomm baseband chip and Qualcomm and Samsung have a patent license agreement in place, meaning its 4G LTE patent infringement assertion probably won’t yield desired results.

“Oh Lee Kun-hee — if you keep this up, you’re going to make the Enron CEOs look like choir boys. The latest episode in the unending shame-game that is Samsung’s corporate improprieties
comes in the form of a an actual indictment against the
electronic-maker’s top man… for fraud. According to a report out of
Australia, prosecutors in Korea have formally charged Kun-hee (who has admitted guilt
anyhow), but say they won’t arrest him because it would cause “enormous
disruption” in the company’s operations. Authorities said instead they
plan to send him to a week-long, all-expenses-paid trip to a luxurious
spa, and hope that a deep tissue rub will rid him of his lawbreaking
ways.”

This is not new my friend. Patents wars are older than most of the people nowadays thing. From Microsoft, to Oracle, from Nokia, to HTC… there were always patent wars. It’s their portfolio and they do everything to protect them against their competitors.

Even Microsoft owned a patent over “mouse double click” … seems crazy but is also true. Which make me belive that some patents are crazy, indeed, but they are the only thing that protect copyright infrigement in court… unfortunately.

But in this case, Samsung can be accused over anti-trust because they are trying to beat the competition over FRAND patents. Samsung are making the things worst for them. We are not taking here about “copies” but about a standard technology.

It just seems lately that patent trolling has become way to mainstream. The patent office apparently is full of idiots. Something as trivial as how you click a mouse should not be a patent. Patents should be about something truly different and innovative. Colors of icons, rounded corners, double clicks, right clicks and stuff like that should not belong to any company.

Or the patent system could work like it’s supposed to (ya know, only have real innovations patentable), and put all the essential patents out there for everyone. Imagine that, billions, if not trillions in the long run, saved, and better products for everyone!